Kevin Cronin laughs when he says it, but it’s true — most of his best ideas start by accident. Camp Cronin, his pandemic-born livestream where he spins stories, answers fan questions with his daughter Holly, and plays stripped-down REO Speedwagon songs, was just supposed to be a one-off. “I kind of fell into it,” he told me. “But that’s how most of my ventures start.”
For a guy whose career has outlasted just about every format the music industry has thrown at him, Cronin still sounds genuinely curious about what comes next. Between working on his long-gestating memoir Roll With the Changes (“I didn’t realize someone else was supposed to write the foreword, so I just wrote my own”) and finding creative ways to stay connected, he’s spent the past few years revisiting the chapters of a story that’s somehow still unfolding.
That story hits a couple of major milestones: High Infidelity turns forty, and The Earth, a Small Man, His Dog and a Chicken quietly turns thirty. The first is a career-defining blockbuster. The second — well, not so much. But Cronin’s surprisingly candid about both. “You’re gonna have high points and low points in a fifty-year career,” he said. “The trick is whether you let the low points define you or teach you.”
The 1990 album arrived at a time when REO was spinning its wheels. Gary Richrath had just exited, taking a chunk of the band’s songwriting muscle with him. “We realized the partnership wasn’t functional anymore,” Cronin said. “Gary and I had a strong connection, but it had run its course.” With new members and producer Tom Lord-Alge, they tried to rebuild. “We didn’t even have a permanent drummer. We had never played a live show together. The record company was breathing down our necks, and we just weren’t connected artistically.”
Even the title came out of exhaustion. “There was an illustration lying around the studio,” Cronin said. “It literally said on the back: The Earth, a Small Man, His Dog and a Chicken. We just said, ‘Okay, that’s the title.’ We weren’t getting anywhere.” He laughs now at the absurdity of it, comparing it to the band’s 1978 pun You Can Tune a Piano, But You Can’t Tuna Fish. “That one was clever,” he said. “This one was just… a cry for help.”
Still, he stands by the songs. “Love in the Future was an ecological love song — I’m proud of that one. The Heart Survives, My Lovers of Rock, Halfway, those all hold up.” He admits the album lacked cohesion. “The best REO records have a shared theme. This one didn’t. The band was too new, the chemistry wasn’t there yet. But you learn from those.”
Learning — and coming back — is kind of REO’s whole brand. “Our songs have always been about hanging in there,” he said. “Ridin’ the Storm Out, Roll With the Changes, Keep on Loving You — they’re all about survival.” The proof came in 2020 when Netflix’s Ozark used “Time for Me to Fly” in an episode literally named after him. “Jason Bateman is exactly who you think he is,” Cronin said. “Cool, smart, gracious. And suddenly we had four songs back on the charts.”
That kind of longevity doesn’t surprise him anymore. “You hang around long enough and suddenly the people who were fans in high school are producing movies and TV shows,” he said. “They remember those songs.”
He’s equally tickled by the fact that Dolly Parton once turned “Time for Me to Fly” into a banjo-and-mandolin hoedown on her White Limozeen album. “She turned it into a frickin’ bluegrass party,” he said. “It’s awesome.” With that song finding new life again, he hints there might be “some energy going around” between him and Dolly — cryptic, maybe, but you can tell he’s intrigued.
Cronin’s memoir, which he’s been writing since 2016, digs into the warts-and-all version of this journey. “There have been dark moments and things I’m not proud of,” he said. “But I want to humanize the band. Tell the whole story. We weren’t perfect — we were just trying to figure it out in real time.”
He still sees himself as “a dorky folk singer from Chicago who somehow ended up fronting a rock band.” And maybe that’s why people still root for him. REO’s story isn’t about perpetual triumph — it’s about recovery. Every hit followed a stumble, every comeback came from being counted out.
“In a 50-year career,” Cronin said, “you’re gonna screw up. The key is to stay curious enough to keep going.” Then he smiled and added, “And write a book about it later.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the video below.
